Monthly Archives: October 2008

hope, india, US

Good Luck Mr.Obama

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Good luck Senator. I hope you win the election and by next week you are Mr.President.  Here are the reasons why I support this young man.

1. Obama is young and is experienced enough. If W can be President, Mr.Obama – editor of Harward Law Review – can very well be. No arguments. Shut up Mc.Cain and Palin.
2. I am an admirer of Clinton. I love to listen to him. Obama is another great orator of our times. Give him a chance to speak to the world.
3. This is kind of a hope. Currently I am reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and there is a striking similarity to the story and our present day crisis. In the story all innovation wasstifled. The industrialist who invents a new alloy, another one who invents a new way of drilling oil – all are hounded by the establishment ( Washington, old way of doing business guys, incompetent scientists ) – to not prosper with their innovation. In fact these new ideas are killed unceremoniously citing various reasons. 
Roll forward 70 odd years and the same thing is being enacted. Stem Cell research has not taken off, electric cars are yet to start rolling off in US ( biggest consumers and biggest pollutors – sorry – it is not China and India – howmuch ever you twist the facts ). I feel John Mc Cain, W – are all the bigots who stifle innovation – because they and their friends ( oil companies pharmaceutical giants, insurance companies) will get wiped out if the new ideas succeed. They prevent the world from becoming a better place to live in. I am hoping Mr.Obama will remove the barricades and change the world. I can bet on Mr.Obama than on Mr. Mc Cain.
4. And this is another hope. I hope Obama inspires another Obama in India. An energetic young man who will put India to where it deserves to be – a country that redefines mankind and spreads peace and happiness in the world – and not a third world country, that apes US and UK.
Me? Thanks for the thought 🙂
And Hell No – not  you Mr.Rahul. It is a sad sad comparision. Tell me one good book you have read. I know you have not written any thing – not even a blog? Tell me one original speech you have given – what are your views on Reservation, Terrorism, Kashmir, China, LTTE. I cannot stand the coming General Election in India when such comparisions will be made. 
Coming back to the man of the moment – Mr.Obama – may the pregnant chads and dimpled chads fall in your favor.
mushy

Best stress reliever

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I have a 10 month old son – and he keeps me occupied all the time I am at home -and I am at home all the time !!

Whenever he is up he tries to grab the chords. He is fascinated with the optical mouse and keeps turning them upside down to see if the light is still on. He just does not get bored of it.

Whenever he enters the room after a nap, or after his feeding battle – he gives a big smile. And I have to smile back at him. And of course the other times when he is doing something really crazy and I will silently smile inwardly without distracting him. 
And of course all these smiling sessions will be punctuated with lot of blood curling cries – when he bangs himself on the door,wall,chair – in fact you start noticing how many hard objects are around you. And when he gets sleepy and does not want to sleep. His motor skills go for a toss and he will make any Bangalore policeman suspicious.  
Someday will introduce you to him – he is a great guy 🙂
 
pesky bots

more funny probes..

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More funny bot probes..


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india, pride

and we have a lift off !!

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Morning today I woke up to see Chandrayaan lifting off on our trusty Doordarshan. What a feeling it was. There was cloud cover so did not quite get the majestic spectacle of a rocket firing on all cylinders – but instead had to watch a dull 2D representation of a dot moving through a graph paper with the rockets speed slowly increasing – 4.8Km/s and so on..

A few minutes after launch when all the boosters had done their job, and the satellite was safely tucked away in orbit around the earth a mic was put and all the scientists got behind it and one by one started congrajulating their team. The 3rd to speak was one gentleman who was so emotional that he said “i dont know what to say” and his eyes were moist. And he did went on to congrajulate all his team members.
I was waiting for some sound bite where some scientist will say take that you NASA or take that for calling us land of snake charmers and call centers – but none. All of them were such sophisticated gentlemen and were so visibly elated and at peace – and were profusely thanking their team members and their family for having allowed them to spend months of hard work. 
But one gentleman did make me happy. ( Thank you Doordarshan for not having the “vision” to put the names of the scientists when they come to speak ). He said next is Mars and other planets. Wow – that is exactly what I wanted to hear. We need visionaries, we need Howard Roarks and I was glad to spot one among them. It took 4 years of dedicated effort for this day.
And the screenshot I took now – is from CNN. Back in 2000 when I was sitting in US doing my MS – I would wait for any news from India on TV. There will be none, zilch – except for Fox News where they had a segment – around the world in 60 seconds. They will dediate 10 seconds for bizarre news – and news of big mouchtaches, or upturned buses that killed school children – was all they showed. Scroll 8 years down and here we are in the home page of CNN – India launches unmanned mission to moon.
Perhaps it is time I let down the nagging feeling of what the world thinks of India and instead let India think of the world in turn. Perhaps seeing our sensex zoom, the markets in other parts of the other world will react positively to it. Perhaps the Revas and Nanos will teach the world how to conserve. Perhaps Hollywood gets inspired by Bollywood and Angelina Jolie starts doing jatkas.
I am feeling groovy…
india

Chandrayaan

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I have every reason to be proud of India. A mission to the moon. I am awaiting eagerly for this historic lift off tomorrow.

When the rovers scooped dirt on Mars I was proud to be a human being – from swinging from branch to branch – and now to hopping planets  – what a giant leap mankind has taken. Also was teeny weeny jealous of NASA for having achieved such a big feat

But when a Made in India metal starts orbitting the moon, it will be doubly special. We have squeezed a rocket from pinching poverty, corrupt netas, terrorism, border disputes, pollution, suppression of minorities – it is an endless list. But for the common man beaten up by all these bad elements – the lift off will be one uplifing feeling – to encourage him to fight off all these cancers and rise above the clouds to achieve bigger things. 
ISRO – a salute to have dared to think beyond 36,000KMs. What is next?
pesky bots

Bots hitting my site.

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The server is kind of up – not yet open to the public but the bots know about it already.  I always keep checking the error logs for such abnormalities.It helps a great deal if you clean all the warning messages your Application is throwing – this way the errors that come up in error logs are genuine and you can monitor your server better.

Wondering if I should invest some time in a script to have a look at these logs – see if a “file does not exist” error happens in error_log and then take the ip address and see what got accessed in access_log – to see if the system is compromised.

On the below code scroll to the right to see the bot’s probes.


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election

No you take the bill, no you pay the bill!!

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Senator Obama and Senator Mc Cain meet each other on the eve of the November Elections. Both are in a generous mood.

BO : Hey John. I thought a lot about the past few months and I want to apologize for all the things I told about you.
JC :  Same here. I too want to apologize. I should have treated  you like one of my grand sons. 
OB : Anyway, coming to the heart of the matter, I want to withdraw from the Presidential race.
JC : Hain?  You crazy or what. You are leading the charts, go ahead it is your cake. Eat it.
OB : Well I think only you can handle the economy and war and all that. I am still a bachoo you see compared to you. So please become the President.
JC : My dear grand son listen to me. I do not want any part of it. I just joined the Presidential race because I was bored. The Bushs had made sure no republican will ever win the election in his lifetime.  I joined the race because lot of people are dependent on this circus – media, my friend Bill O’Reilly..and also my autobiography will sell well if I am an also ran for President. I dont want any part of this economy mess, Iraq mess. I will be happy signing autographs in my book and reading WSJ, WPost about the mess you are in. Its good to be at the other side of the aisle beta.. you will learn when you reach my age. 
OB : Kelatu …..
JC : I knew that reference from Indian movie.  Poda podipayya. Good luck and good night.
buyer's remorse

Starting up on a bad economy

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With the US and Europe banks falling like bowling pins all around, I keep hearing – this is only the tip of the ice berg – I do question myself – Is it wise to start up now? So I keep my eyes peeled for any news on startup and recession in the same line.

Here is a an article on how its good to start a startup during recession. 
For hackers – your competition is less. You cohackers and competitors are probably hanging tight to their jobs or going to join a job or doing their degree.  Also things will be cheaper during recession. And Apple,Google,Microsoft all started on a recession.
For investors – buy when the market is bad. Invest in start ups now – against conventional wisdom – so when market picks up and start up is not start up any more – you reap better rewards. 
Thats what I read ( I read what I want to hear :D)  – you can make your own views from the article.
jobless

Double Whammy for my bong people

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I am half a bong so I can talk about myself. So dont throw fish bones at me. Chew them instead 😉

In the last 2 weeks 2 important events happened in West Bengal. 

Nano moved out and Ganguly puts his stinky feet up. These 2 are isolated incidents and both happen in different sections of the newspaper – business and sports. However I read both and since the events happened close by I have to connect the 2 dots. 
Ganguly – love him or hate him he does hold a mind space among us. There is this IndiaWatchDogs website which was born 3 years back mainly because of Ganguly ( to talk on how to throw him out of the Indian team ).  Or the 100000hours of coffee time that bored techies talk about Dada – for and against. Ganguly has done a great service in entertaining the masses. A salute to him. And of course he has scored some runs in that boring game called cricket – which I have striken off from the list of things that I classify as sports. 
Nano – I am waiting eagerly for it. Its like linux – give it to the masses and they will change the world. It wont take much time  before the dead fossil digester – a  28% efficient combustion engine !! is thrown out and some one puts in a 95% efficient electric motor ( yes – compare the doctored lab notes lying on a Thermodynamics lab and a doctored lab notes of a electric machines lab ). I will get one – no will get two nanos once they do that. So I can carry passengers in one and batteries in another.
Now the 2 or 3 month delay my dear Mamta and Buddadheb have caused is a minor set back. But thanks for upping the ante now before Nano started rolling off the assembly line from Singur – and then if they had done their “politics” – Tata could not have pulled out of West Bengal. Thanks thanks and thanks – for your short term vision in your politics too. Love you both. I will give you a dinner in Leela Palace when you come to Bangalore. Its on me.
Now how does Ganguly and Nano link – is it the beginning of an end and the beginning of a new beginning. Whatever – perhaps Tata ropes in Ganguly to model the car – then my bongers will go boinkers. You never know. Now that will be the Raj Bhog gift back to WB from Tata.